77 FC 257: ‘Mulieribus in tentoriis eorum inventis, nihil aliud mali eis Franci fecerunt, excepto quod lanceas suas in ventres earum infixerunt.’
78 Fath, p. 34.
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79 B.D. Palmer, ‘Gestures of Greeting: Annunciations, Sacred and Secular’, in Clifford Davidson (ed.), Gesture in Medieval Drama and Art, Early Drama, Art and Music Monograph Series 28, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2001, pp. 128–57.
80 Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992, p. 301.
81 See also al-Tabari, Tarikh al-rusul wa’l muluk; David Waines (tr.), The History of Al-Tabari: The Revolt of the Zanj [Volume 36 of The History of Al-Tabari], Albany: SUNY, 1991, p. 101.
82 Peter the Chanter, De penitentia, in Richard Trexler (ed.), The Christian at Prayer: An Illustrated Prayer Manual Attributed to Peter the Chanter (d. 1197), Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1987, esp. pp. 54–5.
83 Roberto Tottoli, ‘Bowing and Prostration’, Medieval Encounter 5.1, 1999, 99–111.
84 Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, p. 70.
85 Armenian satraps offering gifts to negotiate a treaty, William of Tyre, History of Outremer [Old French translation], Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 9084, fol.
42r.
86 Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, p. 70.
87 Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy, p. 70.
88 The Templar of Tyre, ‘Chronique du Templier de Tyr’, in Les Gestes des Chîprois: Recueil de chroniques françaises écrites en orient aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles, Gaston Raynaud (ed . ), Geneva: Zeller 1887, #346.
89 Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le don, forme archaique de l’exchange, in Sociologie et Anthropologie, Ian Cunnison (tr.), as The Gift, London: Cohen and West, 1966 [1925].
90 A.-J.A. Bijsterveld, ‘The Medieval Gift as Agent of a Social Bonding and Political Power: A Comparative Approach’, in Esther Cohen and Mayke de Jong (eds), Medieval Transformations, Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 123–56.
91 Itinerarium peregrinorum, I.296: ‘septem camelos pretiosos et tentorium optimum’.
Nicholson (tr.), Chronicle of the Third Crusade, p. 273. See also Ambroise, Estoire de la guerre sainte, 2, Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber (eds), Marianne Ailes (tr.), Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003, lines 7410–11.
92 Baha al-Din, The Rare and Excellent History, pp. 155–6: According to Baha al-Din, the king said: ‘It is the custom of princes when they camp close to another to exchange gifts. I have something suitable for the sultan and beg permission to convey it to him.’
Al-Adil replied, ‘You may do that on condition that you accept a comparable present.’
The envoy then asked for fowls to feed the birds, and al-Adil joked, ‘So the king needs chicken and fowls and wishes to get them from us on this pretext.’ The conversation ended with al-Adil emphasizing that the initiative for talks came from the crusaders.
93 Wolfgang Grape, The Bayeux Tapestry: Monument to a Norman Triumph, Munich: Prestel, 1994, p. 92.
94 Usamah ibn Munqidh, Kita
¯b al-i’tiba
¯r; P.K. Hitti (tr.), An Arab-Syrian Gentleman
and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh, New York: Columbia University Press, 1929, p. 226: ‘When I was in the company of al-Amir Muin-al-Din to ‘Akka to the king of Franks, Fulk, son of Fulk, we saw a Genoese
. . . He brought with him a large molted falcon. Al-Amir Muin-al-Din asked the king to give him that falcon. The king took it with the bitch from the Genoese and gave them to al-Amir Muin-al-Din.’
95 Hitti (tr.), An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades, p.
226.
96 Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 9081, fol. 16v: Godfrey and King of Hungary.
97 Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf, Ghada al Hijjawi al-Qaddumi (tr.) as Book of Gifts and 255
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Rarities, Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 29, Cambridge, MA: Harvard CMES, 1996.
98 WT 889: ‘“Propterea aut nudam dabis, aut fictum aliquid et minus puritatis habens ex parte tua cogemur opinari.” Tunc demum invitus plurimum et quasi maiestati detrahens, subridens tamen, quod multum egre tulerunt Egyptii dexteram suam in manum domini Hugonis nudam prebuit, eundem Hugonem, pactorem formam
determinantem, eisdem pene sillabis sequens, tenorem conventorum bona fide, sine fraude et malo ingenio se observaturum contestans.’
99 Baha al-Din, The Rare and Excellent History, pp. 229, 230–1.
100 The opposite appears to have been true in Spain, where the Christians were the victors.
As we have no extant written treaties from the period when the Franks clearly had the upper hand, it cannot be proved that such was the case in the East, although we have seen that in the sphere of nonverbal diplomatic language, the Latins did indeed impose their mores on the other side.
101 Cambridge: Corpus Christi College, MS 16, fol. 138v.
102 William of Tyre, History of Outremer [Old French translation], Bibliothèque nationale, MS fr. 9084, fol. 42r; Abu Zayd before the governor of Mevr, Maqamat al- Hariri: Thirty-eighth Maqama, Leningrad: Oriental Institute, Academy of Sciences, MS S23.
103 Baha al-Din, The Rare and Excellent History, p. 229: ‘the draft treaty was drawn up, in which the conditions were recorded and peace for three years, from the date of the document, namely, Tuesday 21 Shaban 588’. (Imad al-Din, the secretary who actually drew up the treaty, has 21 Shaban (1 September 1192) for a period of three years and eight months. See Fath, p. 436.)
104 Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis: credo et lettre à Louis X, N. de Wailly (ed. and tr.), Paris: Hachette, 1868, p. 160: ‘il voulait être aussi honni que le chrétien qui renie Dieu et sa loi, et qui en mépris de Dieu crache sur la Croix et marche dessus’.
Translation by M.R.B. Shaw, Joinville and Villehardouin: Chronicles of the Crusades, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963, pp. 254–5.
105 Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, p. 160: ‘il voulaient être aussi honnis que le Sarrasin qui mange de la chair de porc . . . Nicole d’Acre, qui savait le sarrasinois, dit qu’ils ne les pouvaient faire plus forts selon leur loi’.
106 Michele Amari, Nuovi ricordi arabici su la storia di Genova, Genova: Tipografica del R. Istituto sordo-muti, 1878, Doc. I, 1–5, pp. 45–75. See also Samarrai, ‘Arabs and Latins in the Middle Ages’, pp. 140–1.
107 Otto Brunner, Land and Lordship, Howard Kaminsky and James van Horn Melton (trs), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992, pp. 63, 90.
108 Nicolas Offenstadt, ‘The Rituals of Peace during the Civil War in France, 1409–19: Politics and the Public Sphere’, in Tim Thornton (ed.), Social Attitudes and Political Structures in the Fifteenth Century, Thrupp: Sutton, 2000, pp. 88–100.
109 For the kiss of peace in Western European treaty-making, see Kiril Petkov, The Kiss of Peace: Ritual, Self and Society in the High and Late Medieval West, Leiden: Brill, 2003.
110 Alfonso X ‘el sabio’, Las Siete Partidas del Rey Don Alfonso el sabio, Madrid: La Imprenta Real, 1807; translation by S.P. Scott (tr.), Las Siete Partidas, Chicago: Commerce Clearing House, 1931, 3.13.82.
111 Baha al-Din saw Saladin’s departure from this behaviour as a special sign of modesty:
‘Whenever the sultan shook hands with someone he would not let go his hand until that person had taken the initiative to do so’ ( The Rare and Excellent History, p. 35).
112 Esther 6:9.
113 G.R.G Hambly, ‘From Baghdad to Bukhara, from Ghazna to Delhi: The Khil’a Ceremony in the Transmission of Kingly Pomp and Circumstance’, in Stewart Gordon (ed.), Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, The New Middle Ages, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001, pp. 95–135.
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114 ‘Izz al-Din ‘Ali b. Abi al-Karm Muhammad Ibn al-Athir al-Jaziri (1160–1233), al
-Kamil fi al-ta’rikh, ‘Umar al-Tadmuri (ed.), Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-’Arabf, 2001; translated by D.S. Richards (tr.) as The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period, Part 2, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, p. 397: ‘You know that wearing a robe and a tall bonnet we hold to be shameful, but I shall wear them from you out of love for you.’
115 Baha al-Din, The Rare and Excellent History, p. 231. See also Nicolas Offenstadt, Faire la paix au Moyen Age: discours et gestes de paix pendant la guerre de Cent Ans, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2007, pp. 197–201, 240–5.
116 WT 907: ‘Indicitur ergo voce preconia cohortibus singulis et omnibus generaliter preliandi finis et per legem edictalem ne Alexandrinis inferatur molestia interdicitur.
Egrediuntur igitur concessa pace letantes qui diuturna fuerant obsidione macerati angustiasque . . . inventa etiam alimentorum copia et commerciorum libertate permissa
. . . nostri quoque non segnius urbem ingrediuntur optatam et liberis discursibus vias
. . . colligunt unde ad propria reversi suis aliquando texere possint historias et audientium animos gratis confabulationibus recreare.’ Translation from Babcock and Krey (trs), A History of Deeds, II.341–2.
117 Offenstadt, ‘Rituals of Peace’, pp. 88–100.
118 Jacoba Van Leeuwen, Symbolic Communication in Late Medieval Towns, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia Series I, Studia 37, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2006, p. viii.
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A F T E R W O R D
Bernard Hamilton
The states which were established in the Near East as a consequence of the First Crusade remained, in part at least, in Western control for almost 200 years, far longer than many of the colonies acquired by Western powers in the modern period. This collection of essays examines some of the ways in which the Frankish settlers and their Islamic and Eastern Christian subjects and neighbours influenced each other.
During much, possibly most, of the time that they were in the East, the Franks were not at war with the Islamic powers. Although both sides regarded peace with unbelievers to be ideologically unsound, practical considerations often made it necessary. Two of the essays in this book examine this paradox.
Yehoshu Frenkel demonstrates how slowly the Muslim rulers of Syria and Egypt reacted to the crusading conquests by reviving the concept of jihad and how, even after the Holy War had been promoted by Nur al-Din, it did not in any sense receive unqualified support from the other Islamic powers in the Near East. For much of the time political divisions within Islam took precedence over the prosecution of the jihad, but there was also a desire on the part of many Muslim rulers for peaceful coexistence with the Franks. This was perhaps inevitable because much of the prosperity of Egypt in particular depended on peaceful trade with Western Europe, conducted by the maritime cities of Italy, which had a strong financial interest in the preservation of the crusader states, where they enjoyed privileged status.
Similarly, on the Frankish side, ideology was often subordinated to practical considerations. The Franks were willing to form alliances with some Muslim powers from the early years of the twelfth century as part of their defence strategy.
They also wished to promote peaceful trade contacts with the neighbouring Muslim powers, because this would ensure them the protection of the Italian communes, which was essential because they had no navy of their own. But above all the Frankish rulers wanted peace from incursions which damaged their agricultural economy and disrupted the pilgrimage routes which were their ideological raison d’être. Yvonne Friedman, in the final essay in this book, has explained that although it was ideologically difficult for either side to agree to a permanent peace, protocols were devised by which truces might be arranged 258
A F T E R W O R D
between Franks and Muslims for limited periods. About 120 truces of this kind were made between the Franks and Muslims between 1100 and 1291, roughly one every eighteen months.
Yet, although arguably more time was spent at peace than at war, this did not mean that either side could disarm. Truces were always fragile, so fortifications had to be built, and warriors trained and armed. John France, in the opening essay in this collection, which is a masterclass on warfare in the crusading period, demonstrates very clearly how the terrain of the Near East and the tactics of Islamic armies inevitably brought about important changes in Frankish military practice, which had long-term effects on the art of war in Western Europe as well as in the Near East. A particularly important development was the foundation of the military orders, which produced a class of full-time professional soldiers, hitherto virtually unknown in medieval Western Europe. He concludes his article with an important caveat: both Christians and Muslims were capable of committing atrocities, such as the Christian massacre of the Muslims of Jerusalem in 1099 and Zengi’s massacre of the Latins of Edessa in 1144, but ‘while war was savage it was never total’.
All these essays are concerned with the theme of interaction: what effect did Near Eastern societies have on Frankish settlers and what effect did those settlers have on the peoples among whom they lived and with whom they came in contact? Religious differences were important in the case of relations between Franks and Muslims. Sini Kangas examines some aspects of this conflict of faith.
Christianity and Islam had a great deal in common: both were monotheistic and had almost identical traditions of early world history from Adam to Abraham.
Because of this similarity of beliefs, neither confession could dismiss the other’s faith as completely false. Nevertheless, Christians, who believed that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God, could not accept that God had given a different revelation to Muhammad, and therefore rejected those parts of his teaching which did not conform to that of Christ. Similarly, although Muslims taught that Jesus was a prophet sent by God, they could not accept that God had given him a message which differed significantly from that given to Muhammad. In the Islamic view, all prophets brought men the same divine message, though it was given in different languages and in different cultural contexts, and the message of Jesus had been identical with that of Muhammad. It therefore followed that when the Christian Scriptures gave a different account of the life and teachings of Jesus from that contained in the Quran, such passages must be rejected as a corruption of the truth introduced by Jesus’ followers. Consequently, both Christians and Muslims tended to explain each other’s faith as an heretical version of their own: that is, they regarded it as a corrupt version of a true religion, not as a completely false religion. Common ground was found in the respect with which some people on each side sometimes regarded each other’s conduct. For example, Frankish and Islamic soldiers, at least among the officer class about whom we are best informed, often had great respect for each other. Emperor Frederick II, who was also King of Jerusalem, is said to have knighted Fakr al-Din, the envoy of Sultan al-Kamil, 259
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c.1227. Knighthood was an integral part of the Christian ethic of chivalry, but no requirement was made of Fakr al-Din to change his faith: as a knight, he remained a Muslim and, indeed, became commander of the Egyptian army at the time of Louis IX’s crusade to Damietta in 1249. We know about him from Joinville’s account of that campaign.
Although some intermarriage did take place between Franks and Muslims, such relationships were lacking in parity: in the Frankish states a Muslim who married a Christian had to become a Christian, and conversely in the neighbouring Muslim states a Christian who married a Muslim had first to become a Muslim.
This did not promote cultural assimilation. No parallel barriers existed between Western settlers, who were all Latin Christians, and indigenous Eastern Christians.
In this regard the Franks made no distinction between Syrian and Greek Orthodox Christians who were in full communion with Rome, and members of the separated Eastern Churches – the Armenians, Jacobites and Maronites –
whom the Western Church considered schismatic. This tolerance was, no doubt, partly a matter of necessity because the
first groups of Western settlers were predominantly male. There must have been a high degree of intermarriage between the Franks and indigenous Christians of all confessions, but in the case of Frankish burgesses the evidence is largely inferential. The lives of the Frankish nobility are better documented and the sources show that the majority of those who married Eastern Christians chose Armenian wives and husbands. This was particularly true, of course, among those living in the northern states of Antioch and Edessa. The Armenians were the only Eastern Christians (apart from the Maronites of Lebanon) who had a landed aristocracy, so such marriages were not considered disparaging by the Frankish nobility. This phenomenon is examined by Natasha Hodgson, who shows that such alliances were not without problems.
The Frankish lords wanted not only Armenian brides, but often their lands, and this could lead to conflict. But such marriages could also cause problems to the Franks, because the Armenian sons of mixed marriages could have claims to fiefs in Frankish territories and, in the case of Prince Raymond Rupen of Cilicia in 1201, to the principality of Antioch, a claim which led to the long War of the Antiochene Succession. But if intermarriage between Franks and Armenians did not always lead to political harmony, it did sometimes facilitate cultural assimilation. Thus Queen Melisende of Jerusalem, the daughter of Baldwin II and his Armenian wife Morfia, was sympathetic to her mother’s Church, and it is surely not a coincidence that the Armenian cathedral of St James in Jerusalem was built by masons trained in the Western tradition very near to the royal palace.
The most important Christian power in the Eastern Mediterranean was the Byzantine Empire. Urban II had preached the crusade in 1095 in response to an appeal from Emperor Alexios I for Western mercenaries, and there seems little doubt that the pope considered that the Seljuk Turks, who had occupied much of Asia Minor after their victory at Manzikert in 1071, posed a potential threat to Christendom as a whole. The last Muslim strongholds in Sicily had only been taken by the pope’s Norman vassals in 1091 and the pope was unable to feel 260
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